Drowning in Debt
By Dr. Jessica Wu
Residen
Medical students today can look forward to graduating with a degree and a massive amount of student loan debt.
Studying to become a doctor is no small feat. First, you spend four years in undergrad, then another four years in med school, then have a three-to-seven-year residency, and if you’re lucky, you receive a one-to-three-year fellowship. After all that hard work, you can finally start your bright future as a doctor—with loads of debt.
Most people don’t realize doctors have enormous student loan debt. Nearly 75 percent of med school graduates are burdened with it. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reported the median medical school debt of the 2021 class was $200,000—and that doesn’t even include their undergraduate education.
Last year, the average cost of a public, in-state medical school was $38,947 per year. To attend a private med school, it was $61,023. And those costs only include tuition, fees and health insurance, not housing, books or living expenses. As we all know, those additional costs add up fast.
With all the hours of necessary studying, medical students can’t really get part-time jobs at Starbucks to help pay their expenses. Any free time is most likely spent at the computer or the library—or catching up on much-needed sleep. And the debt piles up month after month.
So as a new doctor, how do you pay it off? Well, you don’t—or rather, you can’t, at least not immediately. The income you’ll earn as a medical resident and fellow definitely won’t help you. According to the AAMC, the average salary for first-year residents or fellows is $57,863.
In August, the Biden administration lessened the medical student debt for millions of Americans—a tiny bit. If you earn less than $125,000 annually, you don’t have to pay $10,000 in federal student loan debt. That’s a good start, but it doesn’t help much if your debt is $300,000.
So how are doctors able to open their own practices? With high rents, staffing costs and all the other necessary expenses, it’s not easy. That’s why more and more doctors believe they need to become employees of hospital groups or large clinics. On the plus side, they can depend on regular salaries and don’t have costly overheads. But of course, there’s also a major downside: those doctors also lose their autonomy.
What if there was another option—a way doctors could minimize their overhead expenses AND have the ability to practice the way they want? An alternative choice is just on the horizon…stay tuned for more.
